All the Difference

When no one wants to love or live with you,you can always live in the woods in a boxof a house, and when your mind grows so lightin your head, as it will, that daylight looksgray, you can always walk out in the rainwhere gray sky is at least a higher ceiling,and of course you’ll go to two forking pathssmothered in slick yellow maple and birchleaves, and for a change you can always choosethe narrow stony one instead of the wideeasy old logging road, but right awaybrambles will be grabbing at your rain gear,leaves will brush across your face soakingyour collar, and you’ll have to watch your feetfor roots, instead of enjoying naturelike Thoreau did all by himself, while a drabsparrow will keep chittering just ahead of you,annoying you with its consistent stupidity,and you’ll begin to realize mossy lumpsoff in the trees you thought were firewoodsome farmer of simpler times forgot to sledhome are really dumped washing machines,gutted car parts, and middens of rusty cans,and before too long you’ll come to a clutchof ramshackle trailers just yards to the rightof the trail, ending all illusions of wilderness,with two slavering pit bulls, savagelystraining at you on flimsy swing set chains,and just beyond that clearing you’ll comeupon a muddy patch littered with brownpaper sacks and aerosol cans and condomsof various garish hues will start popping upon twigs like trail markers of your own spentpassions, so you’ll pause to reconnoiternext to the words “fuck you” carved in tenderbeech bark, to reconsider the journey’s parable,when your heavy mind and heart come togetherto perceive and understand you’ve gone too fardown this dirt track to turn back, a road lessambled by philosophers than by menwho come to shoot guns at empty beer cansand chirping songbirds, but what will make allthe difference, standing in that epiphany,are wet and cold feet, until you’ll noticethat as you were bushwhacking evermoreblindly toward that end where all paths, hardor easy, end, rain had ceased unnoticed,and at any moment then the sky will crackopen and sunshine will pour down uponyou, as yellow and warm as it beams on houses​clamoring with mirth and love.​